A spiritual journal is a place where you can reflect on your spiritual autobiography. It’s a place where your spiritual memoir, or your spiritual story, can be pondered and understood in a new way. Spiritual journaling is often about reflections: reflections on our spirituality, life changing events and our hopes and dreams.

There are different ways you can use a spiritual journal to reflect on your spiritual autobiography. The most common way people journal is through daily entries that describe the spiritually meaningful moments of the day. Sometimes these moments are ordinary. Other times they are extraordinary. Regardless, spiritual journaling allows the journaler to keep an account of how God was present throughout their day.

While some journalers tell their spiritual autobiography through the keeping of these daily accounts, there are other approaches. Some spiritual journals keep an account of what God is speaking through ones experiences. The journaler actually writes down what they hear God saying inside their journal. A common practice is to use a special pen for keeping account of God’s voice that day. This allows the journaler to reflect and separate their own thoughts from the quiet whispers God has offered them that day.

Another rich way to reflect on our spiritual memoir is to look back on our journals. If past entries are dated, the journaler can make comments and mark them with the present date. This allows a spiritual journal to become a place where the past can be connected to the present. It also highlights the way God has moved in one’s life over time. The journal reveals how God has answered prayer, changed lives and healed through its entries. One discovers that their spiritual autobiography is a reflection of God’s strength, love and power in their lives.

A common time for reflection is the New Year. People look back at what they have done and make decisions about what they would like to change. A powerful way to reflect at this time is to look back on the journal entries of past years. This gives the spiritual journaler a chance to see their spiritual autobiography from a new vantage point. The journal allows the spiritual journey to be seen with a fresh perspective and provides a summary of God’s activity in one’s life over time.

There is more than one way to reflect on our spiritual memoir. A spiritual journal is just one tool for this reflection. Many find, although, that journaling is a tried and true practice for reflection. If you want a place to look back and see where God has been at work in your life, consider keeping a journal. It might give you the voice for your story that you’ve been looking for. You might discover that God has been right with you every step of the way.

My "Reflections" creation is a painting made of different squares: each square is like one of the patches from my Joseph Coat. I make decisions about how to fill each square. I select colors, textures, objects and torn papers to make each patch of my painting tell some truth about my story. I want my painting to come together like my Joseph Coat: with all the parts working together in ways that make sense. I want my painting to help tell my story.